Transgender teen stands up for NLMUSD Wellness Centers

Damien Berry began to understand he was transgender a year ago, and has received support from his friends and the Wellness Center at Norwalk High School (Photo by Vincent Medina)

NORWALK - Damien Berry, a 15-year-old sophomore at Norwalk High School (NHS), listens as over a dozen people voice their transphobia and spread misinformation about the Wellbeing Center at John Glenn High School until it is finally his turn to make a public comment. The Norwalk La Mirada Unified School District meeting room is silent as Berry explains that, as a trans person, he feels it is important kids have somewhere to go where they feel safe if they don’t feel they can talk to friends or family.

Members of MassResistance, a group that was labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, have been coming out regularly since June to protest the center with like-minded anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQIA+ advocates. The organization spreads the unfounded claim on social media that Planned Parenthood trained the staff at the center to push abortions and an agenda of “sex mutilation” on students to become transgender.

Erin Berry, Damien’s mother, learned of the group and their activism and spoke out against them during a school board meeting in August. She later told Damien about the group’s messaging, and he decided to get involved. He and his friends went to a meeting in September, where he defended the center and his trans community.

“People were getting a lot of misinformation and they didn’t understand why the Center was there,” Damien said. “I thought it was important to show people [the center] could help kids and it was actually a good thing the center was there.”

The Wellbeing Center provides substance use prevention, mental health support, sexual health education and support to students. It also includes parent education workshops to teach parents how to communicate sensitive topics to their children effectively.

“I don’t like bullies, and I don’t like when people attack something just because they don’t understand everything or agree with everything,” Erin said. “I saw they were posting online that ‘no one is born gay,’ ‘No one is born tans’ and it made me pissed and scared for kids who are.”

In school and growing up, Damien explained something was different between him and his peers. After discovering his love for theater and finding friends he could relate with, he still felt he was missing something.

“I knew I was different in one capacity, but I didn’t know if it was because I liked guys and girls or if it was because I didn’t fully feel comfortable in my body,” Damien said. “I was different from people, but I didn’t know exactly how different until I realized that I was trans.”

Damien began to understand he was transgender in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As his knowledge of the LGBTQIA+ community was very limited, Damien did not know a person could be transgender. He struggled to describe how he felt until he discovered the trans community on social media and people whose stories heavily reflected his own. Damien resonated with their discussions of feeling like they did not belong anywhere, feeling uncomfortable in their bodies, and feeling they were not their gender assigned at birth.

Not ready to accept that he was transgender, Damien experimented with different names and pronouns, trying to find which felt more comfortable to him. He described the process as “picking different ice cream toppings then realizing you don’t need all of them until finally, you find the perfect base.”

He tried using gender-fluid pronouns they/them and the name Alchemy. He found it fitting as alchemy is defined by Merriam-Webster as the medieval chemical process of transformation, where base metals were turned into gold.

Damien received support and acceptance from his mother. However, Erin asked him for patience as she adapted to the new name and frequently changed pronouns, explaining his pronouns would change as he figured out what felt best.

“It didn’t necessarily get me confused, it was just it was a lot to go from something that changed all the time,” Erin said. “It was kind of overwhelming, and I messed up the name a lot, but when he told me he wanted to be called Alchemy and his pronouns, I said, ‘okay’ and accepted it.”

She found that switching from calling him by the name he was born with, his dead name, to Alchemy was easier than switching from calling him Alchemy to Damien.

A year ago, Damien accepted that he was transgender instead of gender fluid. He took on the pronouns he/him and the preferred name Damien, with Alchemy as his middle name.

Erin and Damien agreed that his younger brother Jerimiah was the most accepting, expressing he had forgotten Damien’s dead name because he is used to calling him by his chosen name. Jeremiah began calling him Alch, short for Alchemy, and then Dami for Damien.

However, his father was not as understanding of Damien. Initially coming out to him as gender fluid, Damien said he and his father argued about his gender identity, and it shattered his confidence.

“I told him, ‘I think I’m gender fluid,’ because I wanted to lay it down softly on him. Then he went, ‘Honestly, I don’t think you are,” and I could not talk to him for three days,” Damien said. “I ended up talking to him about it and saying, ‘This is who I think I am. I may not fully know yet, but I know I’m not [deadname]. So, I just wanted to tell you because I trusted you.’”

Damien is also worried about how the rest of his family would react, as they are very conservative. He and Erin are working out the right way to tell them.

At school, his friends do their best to support him and understand what he needs to be comfortable.

Erin and Lydia Wackerman have been friends for years, and subsequently, their children also became friends.

Paul Wackerman is a junior at Norwalk High School, but he and Damien first met in elementary school when they had to attend a PTA meeting with their parents. As their friendship grew, Damien confided in Paul when he was gender-fluid and again when he realized he was transgender.

“Nothing changed for me, they are now he,” Paul said. “He’s still my friend, that’s not going to change anything.”

Lydia explained she has always taught her kids to be open and accepting of others and to be an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community.

“I was a Scoutmaster, and one of the kids came out to me, and I was worried if the boys were going to share a tent with him, but Paul had no problem with it,” Lydia said. “I love the younger generation because it seems to be more accepting.”

The Wackermans were there to accompany Damien when he defended the Wellbeing Center in September.

Damien explained Norwalk High School’s wellness center can help him when he becomes overwhelmed. The on-site counselor he can talk with to manage his anxiety, usually during pep rallies when it is too loud.

“I could remember having a big panic attack, so last year we decided that whenever a pep rally happened, I would just go to the Wellness Center,” Damien explained. “It was way too loud. I could feel everything, and I realized that my brain just shut down. I talked to a school therapist about it, and he said that a major contributor to everything was my anxiety and depression.”

The Wellness Center at NHS focuses more on mental health, while the Wellbeing Center at John Glenn High School offers more services for mental health, education and therapy. Damien is passionate about fighting for it so others like him can access its resources.

After graduating high school, Damien hopes to continue pursuing theater and advocate for the transgender community. He also hoped to connect with more members of the LGBTQIA + community over the summer.

MassResistance has expressed their desire to continue protesting against the Wellbeing Center during Norwalk La Mirada Unified board of education meetings, which they believe is pushing “transgenderism” on students.

Damien hopes to be there to speak against them.

“There is an argument that kids are not born gay, but that would also mean kids are not born straight,” Damien said. “I would also argue that if kids are not born trans, then they are not born cis.”